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    <title>ShellCheck: SC1101 – Delete trailing spaces after `\` to break line (or use quotes for literal space).</title>
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    <h1>SC1101 – ShellCheck Wiki</h1>
    <a href="https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/wiki/SC1101">See this page on GitHub</a>
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    <h2
id="delete-trailing-spaces-after--to-break-line-or-use-quotes-for-literal-space">Delete
trailing spaces after <code>\</code> to break line (or use quotes for
literal space).</h2>
<h3 id="problematic-code">Problematic code:</h3>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb1"><pre class="sourceCode sh"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb1-1"><a href="SC1101.html#cb1-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="co"># There are spaces after the backslash:</span></span>
<span id="cb1-2"><a href="SC1101.html#cb1-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">echo</span> hello <span class="dt">\ </span> </span>
<span id="cb1-3"><a href="SC1101.html#cb1-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a>     <span class="ex">world</span></span></code></pre></div>
<h3 id="correct-code">Correct code:</h3>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb2"><pre class="sourceCode sh"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb2-1"><a href="SC1101.html#cb2-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="co"># No spaces after the backslash:</span></span>
<span id="cb2-2"><a href="SC1101.html#cb2-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">echo</span> hello <span class="dt">\</span></span>
<span id="cb2-3"><a href="SC1101.html#cb2-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a>     world</span></code></pre></div>
<h3 id="rationale">Rationale:</h3>
<p>To break a line you can use <code>\</code> before the line break.
However, if there are spaces after the backslash, the escape will apply
to them instead of the line break, and the command will not continue on
the next line.</p>
<p>Delete the trailing spaces to make the line break work correctly.</p>
<h3 id="exceptions">Exceptions:</h3>
<p>If you do want a literal escaped space at the end of a line you can
ignore this error, but please reconsider and use quotes instead.
Trailing whitespace is invisible and frequently stripped on purpose (by
editor settings / precommits) or accident (copy-paste), and so should
not be relied upon for correctness.</p>
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